Category Archives: Amazon

PBS “Nightly Business Report” interviews Carl Howe, Director of Research for the The Yankee Group about the eBook economy. From the interview:

” Well, tablets are an even bigger market than e-readers, looking at about $5 billion this year just in the United States, about $17 billion around the world last year. This is going to be a huge market. “

GigaOM discusses the draw of multi-use tablets and why they may win out over dedicated e-readers in the long run. From the article:

” But why would Barnes & Noble, Amazon or others even be interested in tablets when they already make a cut of the digital book content purchases? Two answers come to mind: losing control over that revenue stream on other devices and leaving money on the table. “

CNN reports that Barnes & Noble executive Marc Parrish said that eBooks are changing the publishing and retail book business faster than many anticpated. From the article:

” If Parrish’s predictions are right and ebooks become the dominant book medium by March 2013, the question changes from who will come out on top, but who will get left behind in the newest race of technological relevancy. “

Good e-Reader has a list of the Top 10 e-Readers for March 2011. From the article:

” Amazons flagship e-reader is leading the pack with the top content distribution online ebook store. The latest generation Kindle 3G features faster page turns, a sold 6 inch e-Ink Pearl screen. Here is a interesting fact, you can bypass the Great Firewall of China using the 3G network Amazon gives you for free with purchase. “

Mark Cuban has a very interesting article on Business Insider where he discusses the potential for eBooks to be sold as an ‘all you can read” subscription service delivered from the Amazon cloud. From the article:

” Why not ? Download and read any book you want from our collection of 10s of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands. When you are done with it. “Return it” by simply deleting it from your library and pick another to read. Read as much as you want as fast as you want. Add our kids subscription for another $1 per month. More than one kid, get one for each ! “

” Three of the more popular eBook readers currently on the market are the Amazon Kindle 3 (3G Wi-Fi), Barnes & Noble Nook Color and Sony Reader Touch Edition (PRS-650). Each model comes with its own unique selling points, as well as a few singular flaws. If you’re looking to buy an eBook reader, you could certainly do worse than one of these models – but how do they compare? Let’s take a look at each in turn. “

Guardian.co.uk has an interesting article about British author Stephen Leather who decided to publish several novellas on the Kindle platform and had breakout success. From the article:

” To maximise sales, he priced his books at Amazon’s minimum for independent writers – about 70p (the equivalent of 99 cents). At this level, authors receive a cut of only 35% of the price; under Amazon’s pricing structure, this rises to 70% if they price their books above the equivalent of $2.99. He then went on various forums to drum up awareness. “